Saving Seafood

Russia, U.S. and Other Nations Restrict Fishing in Thawing Arctic

December 1, 2017 — MOSCOW — Relations between Russia and the United States are in a deep freeze, but they share a looming common problem north of their Arctic coastlines — the prospect that commercial trawling fleets might overfish the thawing Arctic Ocean.

Out on the sea, the polar ice cap has been melting so quickly as global temperatures rise that once improbable ideas for commercial activities, including fishing near the North Pole, are becoming realistic.

While Russia, the United States and three other countries with Arctic coastline control the exclusive economic zones near their shores, overfishing in the international waters at the central Arctic Ocean could collapse fish stocks.

Whatever their disagreements elsewhere, the countries have a shared interest in protecting the high Arctic from such unregulated fishing, which could affect coastal stocks as well, conservationists say.

Read the full story at the New York Times

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: Barack Obama’s Midnight Regulation Express

December 23, 2016 — The technical definition of a midnight regulation is one issued between Election Day and the inauguration of a new president. The practice is bipartisan. George W. Bush, despite having promised not to do so, pushed through a fair number of rules in his final months. But Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were more aggressive, and Mr. Obama is making them look like pikers.

Mr. Obama has devoted his last year to ramming through controversial and far-reaching rules. Whether it was born of a desire to lay groundwork for a Clinton presidency, or as a guard against a Trump White House, the motive makes no difference. According to a Politico story of nearly a year ago, the administration had some 4,000 regulations in the works for Mr. Obama’s last year. They included smaller rules on workplace hazards, gun sellers, nutrition labels and energy efficiency, as well as giant regulations (costing billions) on retirement advice and overtime pay.

Since the election Mr. Obama has broken with all precedent by issuing rules that would be astonishing at any moment and are downright obnoxious at this point. This past week we learned of several sweeping new rules from the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, including regs on methane on public lands (cost: $2.4 billion); a new anti-coal rule related to streams ($1.2 billion) and renewable fuel standards ($1.5 billion).

This follows Mr. Obama’s extraordinary announcement that he will invoke a dusty old law to place nearly all of the Arctic Ocean, and much of the Atlantic Ocean, off limits to oil or gas drilling. This follows his highly politicized move to shut down the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. And it comes amid reports the administration is rushing to implement last-minute rules on commodities speculation, immigrant workers and for-profit colleges—among others.

Any action that is rushed is likely to be shoddy, especially if it’s from the federal government. The point is for Mr. Obama to have his way and to swamp the Trump administration with a dizzying array of new rules to have to undo. That diverts manpower from bigger and better priorities.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal 

President Obama bans oil drilling in large areas of Atlantic and Arctic oceans

December 21st, 2016 — President Obama moved to solidify his environmental legacy Tuesday by withdrawing hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned land in the Arctic and Atlantic Ocean from new offshore oil and gas drilling.

Obama used a little-known law called the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to protect large portions of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic and a string of canyons in the Atlantic stretching from Massachusetts to Virginia. In addition to a five-year moratorium already in place in the Atlantic, removing the canyons from drilling puts much of the eastern seaboard off limits to oil exploration even if companies develop plans to operate around them.

The announcement by the White House late in the afternoon was coordinated with similar steps being taken by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shield large areas of that nation’s Arctic waters from drilling. Neither measure affects leases already held by oil and gas companies and drilling activity in state waters.

“These actions, and Canada’s parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on earth,” the White House said in a statement. “They reflect the scientific assessment that, even with the high safety standards that both our countries have put in place, the risks of an oil spill in this region are significant and our ability to clean up from a spill in the region’s harsh conditions is limited.

White House officials described their actions to make the areas off limits to future oil and gas exploration and drilling as indefinite. Officials said the withdrawals under Section 12-A of the 1953 act used by presidents dating to Dwight Eisenhower cannot be undone by an incoming president. It is not clear if a Republican-controlled Congress can rescind Obama’s action.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Fishing ban in international Arctic waters remains elusive

December 5th, 2016 — More than a year ago, five Arctic nations signed a declaration pledging to keep their fishing fleets out of the international waters in the Arctic Ocean, an area increasingly ripe for exploitation as summer sea ice diminishes — and perhaps increasingly vulnerable with so little known about its ecology.

Now a group of diplomats is still trying to hammer out a binding agreement to protect waters of the central Arctic Ocean. The effort has expanded to nine nations and the European Union.

A meeting last week in the Faroe Islands, about halfway between Iceland and Norway, failed to produce the deal that some had expected to be in place by now, well before any commercial fishing vessels head north into international Arctic waters. Another session will be held early next year, probably in Iceland.

All parties are sticking by the goal of protecting the Arctic Ocean, said the U.S. State Department official who is managing the negotiations.

“All delegations reaffirmed their commitment to prevent unregulated commercial high-seas fishing in the central Arctic Ocean as well as a commitment to promote the conservation and sustainable use of living marine resources and to safeguard healthy marine ecosystems in the central Arctic Ocean,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Balton said in a “chairman’s statement” that was released at the end of the session.

There was “good progress in resolving differences of view on a number of the main issues under discussion,” Balton’s diplomatic statement said, and there is reason to believe that a binding agreement will be produced soon. “There was a general belief that these discussions have the possibility of concluding successfully in the near future,” his statement said.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News 

New Jersey senators among group requesting offshore drilling ban

October 7, 2016 — TRENTON, N.J. — Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez are among 14 legislators who have called for President Barack Obama to ban drilling off the Atlantic Coast in any areas that have not already been leased.

NJ.com reports the two New Jersey Democrats signed a letter requesting the ban that was sent to Obama on Thursday along with fellow like-minded senators.

The letter also asked that Obama use his executive power to make the Arctic Ocean off-limits to oil drilling.

The senators say drilling in waters off the East Coast threaten fishing and tourism — key economic drivers for coastal states — because of the risk of a spill.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald 

US Wants to Strengthen Agreement to Ban Arctic Ocean Fishing

October 7, 2016 — The United States is trying to broker an agreement between a host of nations to prohibit unregulated fishing in the international waters of the Arctic Ocean.

Such an agreement would be binding and include more countries than a non-binding agreement that the U.S. entered into with Norway, Denmark, Russia and Canada last year to avoid fishing in the area.

Adm. Robert Papp, the U.S. special representative for the Arctic, said a binding, multinational agreement would prevent fishing in the Arctic high seas before scientists can determine what is sustainable. He said the issue is especially important as Arctic ice melts, making the area more open to potential commercial fishing.

“We don’t want people fishing in there until we have the science of what’s happening,” Papp said. “It’s a pre-emptive effort to be able to sustain fisheries into the future.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Nations negotiate fishing in Arctic high seas

April 29, 2016 — Last week, delegates from six Arctic nations and other countries with major fishing fleets met in Washington, D.C., to discuss plans to prohibit commercial fishing in the central Arctic Ocean until scientists can find out more about the fish stocks and how they are changing.

“Fishing shouldn’t occur up there until we have the science and the rules in place,” said Scott Highleyman, director of the International Arctic Program at The Pew Charitable Trusts.

No commercial fishing occurs in the high seas of the Arctic Ocean yet. The 2.8m square kilometer area (1.08m sq. mile) region surrounds the North Pole. It is referred to as the high seas because it lies beyond the 200 nautical mile limit of the Arctic nations. Without regulations, it is permissible for fishing fleets to cast their nets within these waters.

Until recently, the area has been largely impenetrable to fishing fleets. According to satellite records spanning 1979-2000, this high seas area remained ice covered throughout the year, even during the summer. But in the past decade, summer sea ice has retreated dramatically.

During the summers of 2007 and 2012, as much as 40 percent of the Central Arctic Ocean – particularly the waters adjacent to Canada, Russia and the United States – was open water, Highleyman said. Permanent ice has given way to navigable seas and seasonal ice, he added.

In August 2015, the five Arctic countries with coastlines bordering the Arctic Ocean – Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States – signed a voluntary agreement to bar commercial fishing in the Central Arctic Ocean.

Read the full story at United Press International

Study: Gulf of Maine warming faster than thought

January 19, 2016 — The news just keeps getting worse for cold-temperature fish such as cod in the ever-warming waters of the Gulf of Maine.

A new study, conducted by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers and appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research — Oceans, reached an ominous conclusion: the waters of the Gulf of Maine, which a previous study showed to be warming faster than 99.9 percent of the rest of the planet’s oceans, are continuing to warm at an accelerated rate and are expected to continue doing so for at least the next 80 years.

“The Gulf of Maine is really being subjected to a one-two punch,” said Vincent Saba, a NOAA Fisheries scientist and lead author of the study. “On one hand, the region is dealing with the elements of global warming being experienced in all of the oceans, but there also has been a change in the circulation of the two gulf streams that feed into the Gulf of Maine.”

The result, according to Saba, is that more of the warmer water contained in the shifting Gulf Stream is making its way into the Gulf of Maine from the south, while less of the colder water from the Arctic and Labrador streams are entering the gulf from the north and east.

“The Gulf of Maine really sits at the intersection of those two currents,” Saba said.

Saba said the climatic models used in the study project the warming trend could continue for the next 80 years, potentially rising another 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit and setting the stage for extreme and potentially ruinous changes in the region’s ecosystem.

Read the full story at The Salem News

The Lost Whaling Fleet is finally found

January 18, 2016 — During the summer of 1871, a mini-armada of American whaleships hunting for bowhead whales in the Arctic Ocean gambled against the weather, and lost. As the fleet sailed north, the temperature plummeted, and unrelenting winds pushed massive ice floes toward the coast, which first pinned the whaleships in place, and then began crushing their hulls. In the end, 32 whaleships were destroyed in what became the greatest single disaster in the history of American whaling.

For nearly a century and a half, the remains of those ships were hidden from view, but no longer. This past summer, archaeologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, using sonar and sensing technology, found the hulls of two whaling ships in the same area where the disaster occurred. These ships, whose discovery NOAA only recently made public, are almost certainly part of that ill-fated fleet.

The story of the so-called Lost Whaling Fleet is one of the most dramatic in America’s long and turbulent history of whaling. Since the mid-1800s, American whalers had been pursuing bowhead whales in the Arctic. These massive creatures, which can grow more than 60 feet long and weigh up to 100 tons, yielded as much as 300 barrels of oil, widely used for lighting.

But by the time the whaling fleet headed north in 1871, the whale oil market had been virtually eliminated. After the discovery of petroleum in 1859, an ever-increasing amount of that “black gold” was pumped from the ground and refined into a flood of cheap kerosene that ultimately displaced whale oil and other illuminants.

What the whalers of 1871 wanted from the bowheads was not oil, but the hundreds of strips of baleen that were hanging down from the roof of their mouths. Whales use this keratinous material, which when viewed from the side resembles a comb with hairy fringes on the inner edge, for feeding. Baleen was valuable because it was made into hoops for hooped skirts, and stays for stomach-tightening and chest-crushing corsets, which were fashionable at the time. Bowhead whales were especially prized, because they had the longest baleen of any whale, reaching lengths of nearly 14 feet.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

 

Remains of Lost 1800s Whaling Fleet Found

January 6, 2016 — NOAA archaeologists have discovered the battered hulls of two 1800s whaling ships nearly 144 years after they and 31 others sank off the Arctic coast of Alaska in one of the planet’s most unexplored ocean regions. 

The shipwrecks, and parts of other ships, that were found are most likely the remains of 33 ships trapped by pack ice close to the Alaskan Arctic shore in September 1871. The whaling captains had counted on a wind shift from the east to drive the ice out to sea as it had always done in years past. 

The ships were destroyed in a matter of weeks, leaving more than 1,200 whalers stranded at the top of the world until they could be rescued by seven ships of the fleet standing by about 80 miles to the south in open water off Icy Cape. No one died in the incident but it is cited as one of the major causes of the demise of commercial whaling in the United States. 

Read the full story at the Marine Link